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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22978426">Unintentional Artistry</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/choirboyharem/pseuds/despitethewives'>despitethewives (choirboyharem)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tiny Meat Gang (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 16:14:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,517</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22978426</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/choirboyharem/pseuds/despitethewives</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if Cody was needy and annoying and hard to care for, he was the only thing that ever lived in Noel’s head anymore, suffocating his brain and filling it with clots. Like his organs were baiting him into tearing himself open and sucking down his own borrowed blood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cody Ko/Noel Miller</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>90</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Unintentional Artistry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>back again at i don’t know what this is and it has zero prior context and i wrote this very quickly on my phone headquarters,</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Physically, Cody was twenty-eight. To the world that wasn’t out of sight/out of mind to most people, Cody was twenty-eight, and Noel was the same age. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel was one of the very few people who know Cody was only nine months old and he, himself, was almost two-hundred. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel had Cody woven into his biochemistry for eternity, bonded to him as Cody’s maker. Some would’ve called it irresponsibility, but Noel called it unintentional artistry. Sure, he might’ve given in to a moment of weakness nearly a year ago when Cody was baiting him and asking to sleep next to him to ease anxiety, but it had been the first time in decades. One more vampire in Venice wouldn’t have hurt. The entire fucking state of California was sick with them anyway. And Cody had been clingy and needy and cute, smelling rich and strong and lively and sweet and spicy and thick with exposed arteries everywhere. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Do you wanna live forever?” Noel asked him once, testing the waters when they were driving around at three AM about a year ago. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Is that, like, a serious question?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah,” Noel answered, as if he’d just decided it was. “Do you want to live forever?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Uh...I don’t know, man, maybe,” Cody said, half-laughing in the passenger seat and looking out his window. “Why? You making an offer? You want me to join, like, a pyramid scheme or something?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Not a pyramid scheme, man. Real shit. Real, actual, literal immortality. What if I told you that I had something that could make you live forever?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Cody laughed genuinely this time. “Are you—you sound like a fuckin’—you sound Mormon, dude. What the fuck are you talking about?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel grinned at him. “Bro, nothing. Just making an offer.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t fuckin’ know. Yeah, man, sure, I guess. Who doesn’t?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“A lot of people. I think most people.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you gonna be there? Like, you’re already immortal and you’re looking for someone to share this eternal curse with? Don’t wanna just live in your own head forever?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Uh, yeah?” Fine line between parody and reality. “What d’you say?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Um...” Cody giggled softly and shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah, totally. I’ll spend eternity with you, dude. Couldn’t think of a better guy to spend eternity with, honestly.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And Noel, selfishly, had taken that as consent, feigning playful ignorance. Two months later, just after Cody had been throwing around the idea of moving, Noel had slipped in between his legs and sank into his soft, pink throat. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Newborn Cody was a threat that Noel had been massively underprepared for. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Cody’s biology had more or less settled after almost a year, having nearly finished going through a second, more horrifying puberty, but he was still hopelessly young and volatile. Sunlight flayed his skin and peeled his flesh back. He needed to feed at least once a day. He was overemotional and clingy and needy and sensitive and hypersexual. Working around Cody’s instability was difficult, especially when Noel could hear him at every waking minute of the fucking day. In the studio, he’d hear Cody whining about how he was starving to death. While trying to pick up shampoo and toothbrushes at CVS, he’d hear Cody whining about how horny he was. While hunting, he’d hear Cody whining about how he wished he was there too. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And, yeah, a lot of it was endearing. But a lot of it also felt like Noel had become a father a hundred and seventy years late. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Maybe it wasn’t the best analogy. As Noel let Cody ride him, he thought that maybe it wasn’t the best analogy. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p>
<hr/><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel hadn’t turned Cody because he’d wanted to take advantage of what was essentially an eternal roofie. A get-out-of-jail-free card. A get-rich-quick kind of scenario in terms of a soulmate. He’d turned him because he couldn’t stand the idea of being alone again after having met Cody. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He hadn’t done it so he could fuck him. Noel wasn’t gay, he never had been, never would be, and Cody hadn’t been the straight guy he’d wanted to turn. Cody being so physically attached to him was just a side effect. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel didn’t really have a choice from there. They were intertwined. Their hands inevitably sought each other out, reaching and grabbing and clenching tight. Cody would ask and he would receive, because Noel was whipped by his own rewritten biology. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As a little baby demon, Cody could couldn’t control himself. He would gorge himself on blood and flesh and dope himself out on power and fresh, new life and adrenaline, leaving himself in a state of utter desperation and need. It was a ritual Noel offhandedly referred to as the cate-and-bate—to masticate and masturbate. But jerking off never helped. Cody would be so crazed with energy that his body would beg for something to level him with, and who was a more ideal candidate than his favorite person in the entire world? The man who made him who he was? The man who had given him a new reason for living (or not, as it were)?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel had been rewritten for Cody’s sake. Noel had been recreated in his entirety to be able to blend seamlessly into Cody, in thought, word, and deed, real Book of Common Prayer-type shit. His new reality was staring back at Cody and his goofy, sugar-sweet smile in bed, searching somewhere inside Cody’s shining eyes to find what it was that had ever made him, Noel, so goddamn great. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p>
<hr/><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel was Cody’s and Cody was Noel’s and Cody was fucking perfect and Noel was the fucking total absence of perfection. It was an unequal distribution. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">One night, as Cody talked and talked about a new Netflix series Noel hadn’t cared much about, he watched Cody without hearing him, seeing the sunshine leak out of his pores and seep into the space between them. Cody was funny and he was kind and he was naïve and he was beautiful, just objectively, always objectively. Even if he was needy and annoying and hard to care for, he was the only thing that ever lived in Noel’s head anymore, suffocating his brain and filling it with clots. Like his organs were baiting him into tearing himself open and sucking down his own borrowed blood. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel wasn’t worthy. He’d said as much while he was talking to Spock in the early hours of the morning, teetering on five AM, both recklessly teasing themselves with the threat of sunrise. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’ve never met anyone like him, man.” On the rooftop of his and Cody’s apartment building, sitting on the very edge, Noel stared into LA, letting a polluted neon sea drown his vision. “I didn’t—he couldn’t leave. I couldn’t let him. I don’t know what I’d do if he left.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time you tried to, uh...” Noel could hear the mental tiptoeing in Spock’s voice. He didn’t need it. He knew where Spock was going with this. “...end things. You do it a lot. A lot more than any of the rest of us, dude.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah, but I’d really mean it this time,” Noel said, his tone high-pitched and purposefully whiny. Everything blurred in front of his eyes. All he could see were blotches of color. “I’d really try to fucking do it if something happened to him.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It took a second for Spock to speak again. “He never asked you to do it, did he?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel shook his head wordlessly. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“What if he tries it someday? Once he finds out that he’s actually stuck here? Stuck in this body, you know, and with you and him stuck together forever. He’s gonna get over the initial system shock in about a year. All of us do.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m—“ Noel swallowed. A chasm in his chest opened up and begin to invite his insides into the black hole it made. “I’m just relying on everything he said before it happened. Needed the safety net, you know, of him being in—of him—“ Despite everything, it was near impossible to say out loud, especially when he didn’t know if it was a lie or not. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“So is it real for him?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t know. Yeah.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“How about you?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Noel let out a tiny, sharp half-laugh, shrugging and looking away. “I don’t fuckin’ know, man.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“...sure,” Spock muttered. He exhaled and got to his feet. “You better come inside soon.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah, I know.” As Spock’s footsteps retreated, Noel watched the sky lighten, wondering if he could see how long it would take for his skin to flay off if he sat there long enough. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p>
<hr/><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Physically, Cody was twenty-eight. Physically, Noel was twenty-eight. Physically, they had an unending codependent relationship without a label. Physically, everything was pretty simple. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And nothing else about it was. As Cody climbed into Noel’s lap, whispering that he missed him and sinking his teeth into Noel’s neck, Noel realized that Cody’s state of being was only ever going to be a reminder that he was a parasitic narcissist. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Vampires really did have a home in California. </span>
</p>
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